Book Thoughts: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

In her Best Selling Book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo has written the manual for the art of being tidy.  Readers are introduced to the simple notion that the art of tidying is a skill that must be learned.  This alone should instill a huge sense of relief, many people blame themselves because they feel that they “should be” organized.  However, if you’ve never been taught how to turn on the stove, the likelihood that you will become a great cook is fairly limited.  Tidying, having an organized space, these are things that are valued, and yet at the same time, no one seems to provide the training for this valued skill.  It’s assumed that one will figure it out for themselves. 

Marie Kondo would argue that it isn’t that simple.  Most people will be organized for a finite period of time, and return to the more constant state of chaos.  It all goes back to training.  Being tidy is something that first must be learned, then practiced and ultimately is an on-going process.  Being tidy is a mind-set and in order to get there, we really need to examine the way that we are currently thinking.  Marie Kondo proposes the drastic, “get it done,” approach.  She believes you can’t go at being tidy little by little, you’ve got to attack your lack of tidiness with gusto!  That way, you have a clear "before" and "after" picture.  In her experience, her clients never revert back to chaos because the drastic results manifest a life changing moment that is firmly etched in the memory forever. 

Like most skills, tidying can be broken down into just a few basic components.  The skill of tidying requires only two:  the first is making a decision whether or not to keep something, the second is to decide where to put it the thing you are keeping.  The keeping of things is actually the biggest challenge.  Many people store similar things in several different spaces.  That’s where Ms. Kondo comes to the rescue with a clear step by step manual.  If you go about tidying and organizing room by room, you will simply be spinning your wheels.  The process won’t adhere.  She recommends that you gather up all similar items in one place and attack it with gusto.  It is the only way you will experience the mental shift, by seeing all that you actually have and contrasting that by your actual needs.  

And that’s the rub of it isn’t it?  What do you really need?  How do you decide what items to keep?  Marie Kondo throughout her beautiful manual on tidying, keeps referring to items as almost sentient beings.  We put a lot of extra little attachments into our possessions, and that’s really the root of the problem.  All those possessions, all those things distract us from our own truth.  Being tidy isn’t about storing thing away.  You cannot organize clutter.  Storage is just a temporary means of hiding your disorganization.  If you want to truly embrace a tidy life, you have to be willing to address your own feelings towards your possessions.   You have to be willing to let go.  

Letting go is the most important part.  You can’t even think of putting things away until you have finished with discarding the things that you no longer need.  You have to have a picture of what you want for yourself and your life if you want to really know what you need.  It seems hard, but Marie Kondo states that it’s actually very simple.  The ultimate goal in every life is the same – to be happy. For your possessions to contribute to that goal, they too, need to make you happy.  

That’s why Ms. Kondo makes it clear in her manual, that tidying really needs to be a solo process.  You really can’t involve other people in your life because what makes you happy is ultimately your business.  Especially parents can have trouble watching their children let go of toys and mementos from the past.  The past may have been shared but the burden of responsibility for the possessions usually falls on only one person’s shoulders.  Often those toys and mementos are given as “gifts” to younger siblings or the parents.  Unless the item brings them useful joy, you are not giving a gift, you are giving a burden.  Likewise you cannot under any circumstances assume the responsibility for disposing of someone else’s things.  You cannot ever really know what brings happiness to someone other than yourself.   Especially when you have trouble knowing what brings you happiness!

Of one thing that Ms. Kondo is sure, the process of tidying will bring you happiness.  Particularly when she lays it out for you step by step.  Start with the simple category of clothes, then books, papers, those pesky sundry items and then the sentimental items and all those mementos.  Most people would think it would make the most sense to start with the hardest first, but not in this case.  Tidying is a skill that must first be learned and then practiced.  You can’t expect it to be a working on-going process if you haven’t given yourself an opportunity to learn how to do it by allowing practice and letting yourself make some mistakes.  

Not that I would know anything about tidying mistakes…hmm…

What I can tell you is that I myself now have eight bags of clothes for charity.  And…folding socks makes me expressly happy!